About the display of the male body, but also about gesture and facial expression.
Today, from the Daily Jocks people, an ad for products from the Pump! firm, specifically for a line of socks for working out, but with links to the company’s larger catalogue, which tends to feature underwear models “projecting steamy desirability” (as I put it in my Rafael Nadal posting) — in fact projecting a male-hustler persona while teasingly flaunting the pleasures of their bodies.
There’s shirt-lifting (focused on the abs), pants-lowering in the front (pointing towards the crotch), pants-lowering in the back (pointing towards the butt-crack), and armpit displays. The models stare intently into the viewers’ eyes, narrowing their own eyes (signalling arousal combined with dominance, rather than anger), and sometimes opening their lips slightly (another sign of arousal). They are scruffily hypermasculine, projecting not fitness and athleticism, but intense, even urgent, sexuality.
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